WD15EARS and WD30EARX - burn electronics? repair and recover

[pmfsv]

First and foremost cheers guys!
This is my first post here and I'm hoping for a "happy ending"...

Hope to continue reading the forum long after my problem has been resolved (time-willing) and to learn as much as possible in order to avoid future problems and be able to best evaluate any given situation.

So, to the point.
I had the misfortune of acquiring a second hand Power Supply for my system that would allow me to take my current power Supply and finally assemble a long awaited backup server.
Oh irony of ironies, that very same Power Supply (bought recently) ended up killing my 4 drives before I could even backup a single file.
The Power Supply is a Seasonic X-560W Gold fully modular. What I did not realize at the time I was assembling my system with this unit was that amidst all it's cables came a rogue one. A cable that was connector compatible yet did not have the same pin-out as the Power Supply.
Long story short, I zapped my two SSDs and two HDDs with 5v on the 12v line, 12v in place of a ground, and a ground where there should have been 5V. So I got a very long dreaded whiff of burnt electronics.

Tried the HDDs on another machine and they power up and spin but are recognized at all. In my mind this is an electronic failure due to be repaired by a PCB swap as I had done successfully a few years back with a (already then) very old Samsung 40GB Drive. Searched online (ebay) for replacement PCBs for each of my HDDs and found what seamed to be the best match for each. I order them both, from the US, circa 100€ ($135) shipping included.
I got the PCBs and swapped them out, still nothing. Did a little more digging and found that these drives require the original ROM (firmware/bios) to be soldered onto the new PCB, which I did (had professionally done actually, not too good with a soldering iron).
Drives are "somewhat" recognized. Bios does not detect the Drives correctly and will not write to the screen their model during POST but it detects a drive present.

Under windows 7 (64 bits if it matters at all) disk management will pick the drives up as not initialized which I reckon may have to do with some other ROM that was not swapped. Didn't find this too troublesome as initializing them would not prevent me from recovering the partitions and the data therein.
There is however a little problem, when I try to initialize them (still in disk management) I get the following error message:
"the request could not be performed because of an I/O device error"
To me this is vague, to the apt this probably tells them all they need to know.

I reckon this could be a minor problem with the adaptation PCB with a quick fix and if I could avoid paying upwards of 600€ to 1000€ for something I could do on my own, I'd very much prefer that. If, on the other hand, you think this is beyond "home repairing" and are willing to suggest someone I could send this drive to that is both skilfull and .... affordable, I shall be inclined to do the latter.

So as to not make this topic too confusing and even though both drives have the same problem, I would present one case at a time (photos of the drive label, original and replacemente pcbs, close-ups, etc). I just don't know whether to present the one with the most sensitive data first of last?

I'm lay my Drive's fates and the data therein contained in your hands.
Thank you very much.


Regards,
Pedro Vouga

Ps - Sorry for this seemingly endless "rant"...

[fzabkar]

I suspect that by applying -12V to the +5V input you have probably destroyed the preamps inside your two WD HDDs.

As for the SSDs, if they have a 5V TVS diode, then they may have survived.

Photos would help. Could you also tell us the resistances of the TVS diodes? Was the motor controller chip (SMOOTH) also damaged?

[pmfsv]

I suspect that by applying -12V to the +5V input you have probably destroyed the preamps inside your two WD HDDs.

As for the SSDs, if they have a 5V TVS diode, then they may have survived.

Photos would help. Could you also tell us the resistances of the TVS diodes? Was the motor controller chip (SMOOTH) also damaged?

Thank you fzabkar for your reply.
The SSDs are of no concern, they were for O.S. purposes only and have already been replaced by the manufacturer under warranty fortunately.

The real problem are the HDDs, the 1.5TB one to be more specific. Warranty running out in a less than a week. 3.0TB was too loaded with extremely important stuff and has a 2 year warranty still.

As I said, they still spin and at this point are recognized by my Z77 board. Would a couple of HDDs with Destroyed Preamps behave that way?

Thank you.

Regards,
Pedro Vouga

[mr_spokk]

If they are showing up in DM the preamp is good.
Are they showing the right size and model? And you shall NOT try to reinitialize the drives if you care for you're info.
Check the drives in MHDD and report back:
http://hddguru.com/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/

[pmfsv]

Thank you mr_spokk
I did run MHDD but without great success. I couldn't even really know which drive I was selecting.
Regardless, I tried several commands with all of them and the return message was the same, "drive isn't ready"
I'm clearly out of my depth here. For the time being I reckon it's best to handle my 1.5TB drive containing my most high valued data to a Professional and hope for the best.
I will try to pick up as much as possible so as to be able to at least correctly diagnose a drive next time around. I just can't keep "my life on hold" any longer and my schedule isn't helping much either.

I've researched a couple of Companies which do HDD repair and recovery here in Portugal but does anyone have any suggestions regarding a user (of this forum or other) or a company with whom/which you've had experience with/knowledge of having done good work?

Please let me know, thank you.

Regards,
Pedro Vouga

[pcimage]

Member "dmarques" is in Portugal, good guy who knows what he's doing

memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=5766

[pmfsv]

Much appreciated pcimage

[pmfsv]

Much appreciated pcimage

Just hope he still keeps an eye on his msn address..

[fzabkar]

pclab is another professional member based in Portugal:
memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=16233

[pmfsv]

Thanks.
Already sent PMs. Waiting for replies.

pclab is another professional member based in Portugal:
memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=16233